


who dares to love forever/ when love must die?

by yikes_strikes_again



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Shapeshifting, insert doctor who joke that makes people throw things at me, you should be suspicious of the number of tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-06-09 21:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19484437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikes_strikes_again/pseuds/yikes_strikes_again
Summary: Aziraphale waits for the other half in Berkeley Square. There's a bit of a delay, nothing consequential, really.





	who dares to love forever/ when love must die?

He was sitting on a bench in Berkeley Square, watching people lounge about in the sunlight shining through gaps in the branches. Midday had arrived, and with it Aziraphale, fresh from his excursion in the bowels of Hell, half of a double-crossing duo. He still felt that earthly adrenaline in his veins, participating in so hair-raisingly rebellious an act, the kind he would never have contemplated not one hundred years ago. 

He hadn’t even ruined Crowley’s jacket in the process.

Aziraphale allowed a mischievous little smile to overcome his borrowed face. Yes, he was _devilishly_ proud of himself for this one. He’d got it all down - the cockiness, the saunter, all the tiny mannerisms he’d been able to pick up on through their millenniums-long friendship. Not even Crowley’s superiors, who’d known him longer than Aziraphale had, were able to tell his facade apart from the real thing.

And, oh, how he’d _relished_ their terror at his having _“gone native,”_ splashing about, grinning like a maniac - he’d even frightened _Michael_ into _miracling him a towel._ He’d been saving up that one for a long time.

Aziraphale let out a little giggle at the memory. It sounded wrong in Crowley’s voice, too bubbly and unrestrained, a fact that almost spoiled the humor of the moment. Crowley’s actual laughter, rare and special as it was, was warm and lovely like sunlit whiskey, and every bit as intoxicating.

His poor imitation of it petered out, and with only birdsong to fill the ensuing silence, Aziraphale realized how much he missed the real thing. He was painfully aware that this bench was designed for two. Even with his disguise’s lengthy resources in the legs department, the space was incomplete as long as the left half remained empty.

Aziraphale spares a glance to the watch on Crowley’s wrist. 12:42. The two of them hadn’t set an exact time at which to meet, not having the luxury of knowing when their respective businesses would be concluded. But he had been waiting in the shade of the London Planes for about a half hour now, and would be lying if he said he felt no sparks of anxiety flashing in his gut. It was probably just a short delay, he told himself - nothing to fret over. Heaven’s bureaucratic management often got in the way of quick and simple affairs, as Aziraphale was all too aware. His bosses were most likely stuck trying to file the proper paperwork, their charge woefully unharmed. Soon, he was assured, Crowley would show up in his newly-restored Bentley, and all would be well. Perhaps they could secure a reservation at the Ritz, if circumstances were kind.

Aziraphale was contemplating how bizarre it would be to watch his own body approach and take a seat next to him when he felt _it_ . A _something_ in the air, an abrupt change in temperature. Like a cloud flinging itself in front of the sun, only, somehow, cataclysmic. No one else reacted, naturally, as, ironically, only angels knew the scent of something so _human,_ so much like - 

Love. Only this time, this _something_ was wrong, and it made Aziraphale’s stomach drop. What he felt was not love itself, but its sudden absence.

 _Oh, how terribly unfortunate,_ he thought. He glanced around at the nearby humans through Crowley’s sunglasses. Had somebody lost their love for somebody? Or, he thought in horror, had some poor, affectionate person _died?_

But no cries of disgust arose; neither, still, did wailing ambulance sirens or any hints of conflict whatsoever. Aziraphale breathed, still perturbed, but perhaps less surprised than he might’ve been. Even yet, that _something_ , or lack thereof, was still at the forefront of his mind, its cause disturbingly unknown. 

Perhaps it was just one of those ineffable facts of life. 

He sank back into the bench. The shade was feeling less cool and more chilling, now; Aziraphale didn’t notice himself drawing the hands to the elbows of Crowley’s jacket, silently praying for a patch of sunlight to befall him. Or, even better, for some Londoner to rekindle their love, so cold and dead at the moment. Some remote instinct screamed that this was not to be, that he should know the meaning of this awful frigidity in the atmosphere, but he pushed it away before it could scare away his optimism.

But as the minutes ticked by, the scenery changing little beyond the imperceptible shifting of the shadows, Aziraphale failed to become accustomed to the bleak sense of loss he was forced to entertain. It surrounded him. Of course, he could still detect flashes of love here and there, from passers-by, but there was a general _emptiness_ in everything that was a little alarming. If he were to describe the feeling to someone else, he would say it was as if all the world’s colors had experienced a sharp decrease in saturation, losing all their vibrance and beauty. 

And he had no idea when things would return to normal. 

_Normal._ Aziraphale raised his eyebrows at that unbidden thought. That love he’d been feeling, that he was missing so dearly, was _normal._ The sense of it came and went, of course, but it tended to fluctuate within a certain capacity. Aziraphale realized, with a jolt, that he hadn’t felt an absence of love like this in _years._ In fact…

In fact, he can’t quite remember an absence this profound _at all._

Something had gone terribly wrong. 

His instincts screamed again.

Aziraphale willed his nerves to unwind. No point in worrying himself into a frenzy over things he couldn’t fix. Surely, all would return to its natural state given time; love _was_ a fickle thing, after all, and could restore itself through absence. Nevermind how _much_ love would have to be restored in order to resurrect Aziraphale’s sense of equilibrium, or what disastrous occurrence could have caused such an event in the first place. Everything was going to be fine. 

It was cold under the trees.

He checked the watch again. Forty-five minutes had passed since Aziraphale had sat down, and Crowley (in Aziraphale’s body, of course) was nowhere to be seen. 

_Perhaps he’s gotten stuck in traffic,_ he thought wryly. He tried to laugh again, in a way more befitting of the voice he’d assumed, but it came out forced and hollow, and brief.

It wasn’t funny. Not really. Crowley was _never_ late, least of all to a meeting like this. He knew Aziraphale would be worried. And to feel an unfamiliar chill, at this time of all times? To assume it was coincidence - 

No. No. He wouldn’t allow himself to assume the worst. No angel worth their salt would willfully fall into despair. 

Instead, he stared into the whirling masses of clouds in the distance, drowning out the screaming in musings on the possibility of rain. Storms in September? Unlikely, but plausible. It wouldn’t be presumptuous to assume that the remnants of the world not ending would leave some mark on the world’s weather patterns, even if everything else had seemingly returned to normal. 

Aziraphale desperately wished for things to return to normal. 

He breathed a sigh out of his nose. Of all the topics he could have chosen to distract him from his worry, why did he decide on something as banal as the _weather?_ The weather is what you talk about when you have nothing to say, what you mention in a futile effort to keep the thread of conversation going. The weather is what you comment on in passing when with another, but that you never dwell on, assuming the two of you have actually interesting things to discuss. The weather is not engaging enough of a subject to act as a diversion from serious causes of concern that would send him into paranoia if he thought on them too long. If Crowley were here now, _maybe_ he could think of something witty to say about the clouds, but that would be a challenge even for - 

Aziraphale winced. Thinking about Crowley probably wasn’t the wisest idea right now. 

He fidgeted, drumming his fingers in his lap in a very un-Crowley-like gesture, wishing that his boredom would triumph over his fear. He had a natural penchant for rooting for the underdog, anyway. 

A few more minutes of waiting made it clear that this wasn’t going to happen. Well, he thought, as long as he was going to keep worrying, he might as well channel his nervous energy into doing something useful. He should call Crowley, send a message, check in and confirm that he was alright. Hopefully, he would pick up to reassure Aziraphale that yes, everything was fine, the plan had worked, and that he never should have concerned himself. He withdrew his own mobile phone from Crowley’s pocket and stared the number at the very top of the list.

But just before he tapped the call button, he was held back. If Crowley’s side of their scheme was held up and he was still with the Archangels, setting off his ringtone wouldn’t do anything to help matters. In fact, if his bosses confiscated it, they’d be able to check who was calling… and his own name would be on the screen. It would ruin the entire facade. How ironic would that be, a show of concern directly causing the unraveling of their grand plan. Practically Shakespearian in terms of tragic plot development. No, no. It was best to simply wait - it was all he could do. 

Aziraphale sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time, but it did nothing to relieve the tension in his nerves. It was all so nerve-wrackingly _futile,_ every part of it. In all the thousands of years they had spent on Earth, they’d always had each other to count on. Aziraphale on Crowley, mostly. But now they each had to go it alone, in unfamiliar realms, surrounded by danger and hostility. He imagined the glacier-white offices of Heaven, piercing and sterile, every pair of eyes scrutinizing and picking you apart, looking for any hints of dissent or imperfection. He knew it very well. Aziraphale couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be to visit for the first time in 6000 years. 

He needed to stop thinking of awful things and just _relax_ for a minute. He wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t, not as long as Crowley had yet to return. So he’d better get used to waiting. Aziraphale readjusted himself, stretched Crowley’s limbs, took deep breaths, did everything to slow his heart rate. _Don’t fret yourself,_ he reminded. _He’s always telling you to stop worrying so much._

Minutes slipped by. The universe still felt cold in that unexplainable way, but eventually, the branches arranged themselves in a kinder fashion, allowing for a sliver of warmth to fall across his lap. It was a small comfort. Aziraphale let his mind wander to inconsequential things, lulled by the peace and slowness of the afternoon. All was well for now.

Lord, he was exhausted. Celestials didn’t require sleep, of course, but the past week had been the most stressful he could remember. The responsibility of averting the apocalypse had sapped him of all his mental energy. Perhaps, then, it was no surprise that when Aziraphale took a moment to rest his eyes, he neglected to reopen them as seconds turned to minutes, and minutes to hours. 

~~~

The world was soft and bright, just as Aziraphale remembered it. Love was in every breath, every sigh of fondness and relief. And there were plenty of those. Because aside from the ducks splashing in the pond, the sun persuading every flower to show its face, aside from people talking and laughing and living their lives, Crowley was there. 

The two of them were standing on the banks, chatting quietly, though Aziraphale couldn’t make out the words. It was gentle, easy conversation, that was for sure; he caught Crowley’s soft chuckle at something he said, and that was the first and only time he felt his heart skip a beat. 

Aziraphale thought their hands touched at some point, and there was no tension, no panic that someone might be watching them. They could simply be. They were free. 

But the moment, as glorious as it could possibly be, was as fleeting as the flocks of doves that broke from the trees. Aziraphale found himself looking at Crowley, trying to figure out how to say the very important something that was on his mind. But long before the words had a chance to fly from his lips, the warmth and pressure of Crowley’s hand disappeared. He had stepped away. Aziraphale could only watch, bewildered, as his friend proceeded to remove his jacket and toss it aside. For what purpose, he didn’t know - the details were bleary and formless at the edges.

As Aziraphale stooped to recover the jacket, he failed to notice Crowley’s movement towards the water. When he looked up again, he saw him on the edge of the bank, gazing at his reflection. A sense of foreboding overcame him; something about the water seemed threatening. It was too still - no waves lapped at the shore, and the ducks had vanished. A perfectly smooth mirror image of the sky stared from its depths.

Crowley was as motionless as the pond, a statue situated on the very edge. 

Aziraphale didn’t realize what was about to happen until seconds before it did. He heard himself utter the clearest word yet - Crowley’s name - in a fit of sheer panic, and this was the catalyst. Crowley jerked forward at the sound of his voice; as he dipped forward, Aziraphale braced himself for the splashing, the shouting, the ripples - but there were none. In a twisted violation of physics itself, the twin reflections merged in less than a second, leaving nothing behind.

And that was it. The sunshine was still warm and beautiful, and Crowley was gone. 

Aziraphale felt himself rush forward, eyes searching the water for any sign of his oldest friend. But there was nothing to look for. He was gone. The birds sang, the people laughed in the distance, and Aziraphale was left clutching Crowley’s jacket, confused and upset by all of it.

It was so anticlimactic that it sickened him. 

He looked down at his hands, mind swimming with impossible questions. What in the name of God was happening? Why was the world just going on, unaffected, in the wake of his worst nightmare? Why was he still gripping Crowley’s jacket like it was his life? _Where was Crowley?_

More importantly, Aziraphale wondered, why was there rain on his face underneath a blue, cloudless sky? It didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. He was cold, so cold, in a world untouched by his pain.

His face was cold…

~~~

Aziraphale woke with a start. Cold rain splattered his face, which was turned to a pitch-black sky. A roll of thunder shook the world. Somewhere, a nightingale twittered frantically, and to his addled senses it seemed to be crying out a warning. 

He blinked, mind flustered by the remnants of a frightful dream with no ending. Where was he? Why was it dark outside? 

And then he sucked in a freezing breath. He was waiting for Crowley; there was some sort of delay, and Aziraphale must have dozed off. Night had fallen. 

_Night had fallen._

He was too distracted by reality slapping him in the face to control his breathing, which was growing more panicked and labored by the second. His intuition, which had been screaming from the start, shrieked for him to confront the fact that if Crowley hadn’t come yet, _he probably wasn’t coming at all._

The thought nearly broke him to pieces right there, but Aziraphale retained the strength to stand and press his phone to his ear, praying with the last of his strength that someone would pick up - hell, he'd have been happy if _Gabriel_ answered at this point. After all, it wasn’t as if things could get much worse.

He could barely make out the ringback tone over the howling wind. 

The seconds dragged out, one after the other, and after about twenty of them Aziraphale was sure that his blood was going to freeze like ice in his veins. But at the end of an eternity, he finally caught the voice he’d been dying to hear.

It was Crowley’s voicemail greeting.

_Fuck._

Aziraphale’s vision was tunneling; he had no cognizance of the content of the greeting or how long it lasted, and before he could collect his thoughts from the brink of desolation, there was a beep. 

He spent several seconds breathing into the microphone, completely at a loss as to what he was supposed to say. “Where the Heaven are you”? “I’m so worried about you”? “Is everything alright”? all sounded equally useless. Nothing Aziraphale said could change reality. Any message would disappear into the void, never to be heard. 

So, without thinking at all, voice thick with emotion, Aziraphale blurted, “Crowley - “

\- and immediately choked on the lump in his throat. 

For in his hysteria he had forgotten what he was: a perfect emulation of the very being he was grieving. The sobs he was choking back? _They were in Crowley’s voice._ Everything was Crowley’s. Aziraphale was in Crowley’s clothes, shaking in his skin, contorting his face in anguish; his arms were drawn around Crowley’s, he was breathing through his lungs, was wearing the body of a _dead man_ -

Aziraphale had miracled himself into his shop before he even knew he was going to be sick. He was a thing from outside, tainted by mud and rain, out of place in his own not-burned-down home. There was no room in his mind for him to question that fact, however, not while he was retching on the floor; each mismatched sound sent another wave of revulsion rattling him to his core. He could easily fool himself into thinking it _was_ Crowley he was hearing.

Once he stopped tasting bile at the sight of Crowley’s hands, left with only the burning in his eyes and throat, Aziraphale was able to focus enough to return to his own body. But in a certain way, that action ripped another fresh wound into his soul. For it was only once he felt the dampness of rain on his own skin that he realized that his vile imitation was the last time he’d see even the mere _image_ of the demon.

Himself again, Aziraphale sat alone, freezing, on the floor of his dimly lit shop. He was silent, shocked, trying to recover, desperately trying to get a grip on things and failing miserably. Then, he scoffed, morbidly amused by the situational irony of it all. Save the world, and lose each other the next day? An ineffable plan, indeed. A cosmic joke that was totally lost on him, as lost as he felt without Crowley by his side. Despite this, Aziraphale laughed for a long time, though it sounded strangely wet and broken.

Crowley was dead, that much was certain. However he had died, he had died without a soul to comfort him in the most hostile environment in existence. He was never coming back, and Aziraphale, the only celestial on the planet, was completely alone. 

How cruel life was. Even that thought felt like a gross understatement.

But even amidst this agony, this wound that bled from the center of his chest(?), there was room to add insult to injury. That love he had felt die like a bucket of cold water was undoubtedly Crowley’s; the timing was too much of a coincidence, and the explanation made far too much sense. Of course, that would mean that Aziraphale had actually felt the moment when Crowley had… oh _, God in Heaven…_

He stifled the sob before it could send him into tears again. It came out anyway, muffled behind the hand pressed over his mouth. It was as if the world had ended, despite their efforts - and there was an iota of truth to the idea. If the base standard of love in the world had fallen sharply at the moment Crowley - Aziraphale still found the truth difficult to acknowledge - then the world had been irrevocably robbed of that. It would never be the same again. But _why?_

It didn’t matter - nothing mattered now, Aziraphale knew - but his frenzied mind worried the detail as if it was the only thing to focus on. Demons weren’t prone to love. In fact, he’d been sure they couldn’t - and thought Crowley was the same. No, he was sure of it. Crowley had never loved anything or anyone. He was mistaken somehow. Something else must have died along with him.

… Oh, who was he trying to fool. Aziraphale knew, as surely as he knew anything, that even if most demons didn’t love, Crowley wasn’t most demons. He had seen the way he had fawned over humanity as boldly as he, how he had loved his houseplants and Da Vinci and the Bentley and Queen…

.... and the way he had looked at him.

Oh, yes. Six thousand years was more than enough time to pick up on Crowley’s unsubtle flirtations and unspoken confessions. Six thousand years was more than enough time to learn his particular language of love, little services and offerings that were never rescinded, were never extended selfishly, on the condition of reciprocation. Six thousand years was more than enough time to work up the courage to _return_ that affection openly, to throw caution to the wind in the name of the most beautiful thing in the entire universe. But Aziraphale had been so scared of their superiors, so cowed and bullied into submission, that he had let his fear rob him of that divine opportunity - no, that divine _love._

He was not immune to the trappings of his own ability - Aziraphale’s readings were liable to be thrown off by his own feelings, a fact that his fellows had always considered to be a flaw. Angels were supposed to love, but only in a cold, impersonal, I-have-love-for-all-things way. His love, in contrast, was intense, very personal, and unusually frivolous. And he had noticed, relatively recently, that with a sharp increase in time spent with Crowley, there was a sharp increase in the local sentiments. He knew this was no coincidence. Aziraphale knew how, when one loved another that deeply, the whole world became shrouded in a kind of beauty. He understood what that was like, that eternal, all-encompassing feeling.

So maybe, just maybe, _Crowley had understood it too…?_

He let out another wet, violent exhale, the result of holding onto one’s staggered breaths too tightly. It couldn’t be proven, could never, ever be proven, but if Crowley had loved Aziraphale as he had in return, then it was a strong possibility that all of that love had been for _him_. 

That he had pushed it away for nothing. That he had been wrong about it all along. That he hadn’t even realized it was there until it was gone forever.

As if his thoughts hadn’t been torturous enough...

Aziraphale couldn’t find it in himself to brush away the tears, even as they continued to fall. He couldn’t brush away his grief, not when it was the only thing that mattered, now that Crowley was gone. He thought distantly, in his near-catatonic state, that with their deception discovered, it wouldn’t be long until the angels came for him, too. The thought should have terrified him, should have enabled him into action, to run or hide or do every manner of foolish, pointless things.

But a numbness tugged at the edges of his brain, willing him to just sit, silent, breathing erratically, until the universe forced him to stop. 

~~~

He had no cognizance of the amount of time that passed, only that eventually, light flashed behind him and the room instantly turned five degrees colder. Aziraphale heard voices, Gabriel’s, Uriel’s, but words blurred like wet ink. He expected force, expected questions, expected shouting, but after a long pause there was simply a clatter and another flash of light. 

For the next few seconds, it wasn’t clear what had happened, but then Aziraphale smelled burning wood and paper. A fitting end, he supposed. There was a low, growing crackle of flame, and the unforgettable tinge of smoke filled the air. A few short minutes, and the entire store would be blazing with the unholy brilliance of hellfire. 

He couldn’t bring himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> ...should i say "sorry"?


End file.
